


Tea Time

by zomi_hime (NZM11497)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Mollymauk Tealeaf Lives, One-Shot, Use of ocs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 08:39:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17443586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NZM11497/pseuds/zomi_hime
Summary: He woke up from his grave for the second time, unaware of the events that took place beforehand and his current identity and surroundings. It wasn't long before he stumbled into the Savalierwood, coming across a magical wall that ended up introducing him to an odd bunch in a secluded area.





	Tea Time

“What is this place?”

The lavender tiefling stood before a seemingly mystical wall adorned with vines, leaves, and flowers of all kinds. Just from a glance, one wouldn’t believe this elegant sanctuary existed within these dreary woods by Shady Creek Run. He coughs up a little bit of blood before stepping any closer towards the wall.

He places his callused hand upon the freezing wall, asking all sorts of questions to himself: Where am I? Who am I? How did I get here? What he only remembers is waking up from beneath the ground, nearly suffocating from the colorful tapestry he was wrapped in, and a long stick with an extravagant coat blowing against the winter winds. He clutches a tattered note that was laid upon the now healing wound in his chest and continues to marvel at the wall.

There was something about the general area that seemed off yet comforting to the tiefling. He backs up and examines the wall, and with one big leap, he begins to climb. The task seemed easy to begin with, but the more he climbed, the tiefling began to sense a bit of hostility from the plants. Suddenly, the vines began snaking around his limbs, and before the tiefling could try to escape, the vines locked on and began lifting him up in the air.

“What the hell?! Somebody help me!” the tiefling shouts, hoping to grab someone’s attention. His cries echo throughout the woods, scaring whatever wildlife was around. “Help! Is anyone there?!”

In his frantic state, the tiefling whips his head around to see a medium sized kenku pointing a shortbow in his direction. Remembering the pair of glass scimitars on his person, the tiefling takes hold of one and slashes at the vines. The plants seemingly writhed in agony and let the man go on the opposite side of the wall.

“What the fuck…” the tiefling mutters to himself. However, he didn’t have much more time to process what just happened as the kenku dashes towards him, shortbow in hand. Acting upon instinct, the tiefling draws one of his scimitars to the kenku, keeping it at bay.

“Stay back!” orders the tiefling as he slowly begins to stand up.

“Stay back!” the kenku repeats in his voice.

“Look, I don’t want to hurt you. I’m just looking for some sort of civilization out here.”

“Revi!” The tiefling looks up at the delicate voice of another, lightly-shaded purple tiefling headed their way. “Put that thing down, you’ll hurt someone with it.”

The kenku hesitantly lowers her weapon and scurries behind the girl. The lighter tiefling examines her male counterpart, “Who are you?”

The man puts his scimitar away and searches for the note he woke up with. “I’m… not quite sure. But maybe this might provide some answers.”

He hands over the note to the girl and she begins to read it. She scans it over a couple times and gets back to the man. “Well, this note says that your name is Mollymauk Tealeaf and you should look for a group called the… Mighty Nein?”

“The Mighty Nein?” Mollymauk repeats. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”

“I don’t know. Whoever wrote this is either Zemnian or they can’t spell ‘nine’,” the girl chuckles. She examines Mollymauk once more, taking note of all the scars and wounds on his body, “You look like hell.”

“Yeah, well,” Mollymauk says as he stretches, “kinda just been through something like it a few minutes ago.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. The wall’s meant to keep people out. But what’s important is that you’ve made it safely on our side.” She gestures towards the ancient looking temple behind her, “Would you like to come inside? I’m sure Mr. Clay can make you something to help ease the pain a bit.”

“Uhh… sure…” Mollymauk hesitantly follows the girl and the kenku, now known as Revi, inside the temple.

Inside appeared to be a bit contrasting to the exterior; there may have been a few cobwebs here and there, and the den was cluttered, but there was a warm and welcoming atmosphere to it. The girl moves to the shelves and grabs three elegant, yet dated, teacups and sets them on the table. With kind eyes, she gestures Mollymauk to take a seat at the small, round, wooden table.

“You know,” Mollymauk begins to say, “I don’t think you’ve told me your name.”

“Oh, my bad,” the girl says as she begins to take tealeaves from a jar on the counter. “I’m Lilith. That’s my sister, Revi.”

“I’m Revi!” the kenku says in Lilith’s voice.

Mollymauk chuckles, “That’s pretty cute. How old are you, Revi?” Revi clicks and coos, looking to Lilith for the answer.

“She’s twelve,” Lilith answers.

“I see. And who’s this Mr. Clay you mentioned earlier?”

“Well, I can answer that,” a laid-back voice calls out. A vastly tall, thin, gray firbolg saunters towards the group, wearing the friendliest of smiles and had a jovial demeanor about him. He had a shockingly pink mohawk with a pink beard to match, wore a gentle looking silk shirt with a sleeve that was long and flowing, dark green pants, and brown boots with some sort of pink plant of a pattern on them. In his hand was a staff with a fragmented gem of some sort at the top of it. Mollymauk swore he’s seen that gem before, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“I take it you’re Mr. Clay?” Mollymauk asks.

“Yeah,” the firbolg reaches out for a handshake, “the name’s Caduceus.”

“Caduceus!” Revi repeats as she gives the firbolg a hug.

“Nice to meet you, Caduceus. This is a nice place you’ve got here.”

“Ah, thanks. Not a lot of people come by and say that.” Caduceus’ warm smile put Mollymauk at ease being in an unfamiliar place. “I take it you know the girls by now.”

“Yeah,” Lilith says. “Thank goodness I went outside when I heard him screaming; Revi was about to put an arrow through his forehead.”

Caduceus looks down at the kenku, “Revi, you know that’s not how we handle visitors.” Revi apologetically hangs her head a bit, hugging Caduceus’ leg a bit tighter. “Now now, it’s okay. Just remember to come get me next time, alright?”

“Okay,” Revi responds in Caduceus’ voice.

“Speaking of which, I’m terribly sorry about the vines. They don’t necessarily like strangers,” Caduceus apologizes to Mollymauk.

“Oh, it’s quite alright. It wasn’t that big of a deal,” the tiefling sarcastically retorts.

“Oh, that’s good,” Caduceus responds in relief, completely unaware of Mollymauk’s tone. Lilith, however, understood clearly and shot a glare in Mollymauk’s way.

She turns to Caduceus, “Mr. Clay, could you help me with this? I don’t want to be around the fire.”

“Of course,” Caduceus gladly agrees. He takes over making the tea as Lilith sits next to Mollymauk at the table.

“I really like you’re jacket.”

“Oh, thanks. I found it by the place I woke up at,” Mollymauk chuckles.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t think it’s that important.”

“What do you mean?” Lilith asks. She takes a moment to think and examine Mollymauk once more. Noticing the amount of dirt on him and the healing wound in his chest, she finally understood the little “fact” that he was trying to hide. “You were in that grave, weren’t you?”

“Grave? What grave?” Mollymauk asks, genuinely confused.

“That grave just outside the Savalierwood? It had like this stick and that jacket was on top of it. I had to stop the raven from picking at it.”

Realizing there was no way out of this, Mollymauk sighs and explains the best he could. “Well, I didn’t know it was a _grave_. I just figured some asshole put me in there and left me to rot.”

“Yeah, but you had—well have—this nasty wound in your chest. Like someone just cut a huge chunk out of you or something.”

Mollymauk raises his eyebrow in suspicion, “Did you know I had this wound _before_ I came over here?”

Now it was Lilith’s turn to do some explaining. However, unlike Mollymauk who was straightforward, Lilith does her best to avoid all eye contact with him. She begins twiddling her thumbs and stutters a bit under her breath, trying to find the words to say.

“She did know,” Caduceus answers for her as he brings the boiling teapot over to the table and begins to pour tea into the cups. “It’s okay to tell him the truth, Lilith. It’s better than trying to come up with a lie.”

Caduceus hands Lilith her cup and she immediately takes a sip. She winces from the pain of the piping hot tea, but she shakes it off and gradually makes eye contact with Mollymauk.

“I wasn’t doing anything bad to your body or anything. But… sometimes people get buried with… interesting things. I-I just wanted to see if there was anything interesting down there with you.”

Mollymauk tilts his head a bit, staying silent for a moment or two. He takes a sip of his tea and nods his head, “Well I can’t argue with that. Some dead people have some nice shit that they’re not going to use anytime soon.”

Processing his nonchalant response to her confession, Lilith takes a huge sigh of relief. “I’m so glad you’re not angry with me. I’m so sorry.”

“Ah, there’s no need to apologize,” Mollymauk insists. “I’m just glad you didn’t hack my body any further than it already is.”

Lilith chuckles, “I don’t think I’d ever bring myself to do anything like that. At the very least, I’d bring Mr. Clay over and next thing you know, we’d be drinking some Mollymauk tea.”

Mollymauk nearly spat out his drink upon hearing such a bizarre statement. “Excuse me, come again?”

“Oh, I guess it’s okay to say this too. Mr. Clay makes tea out of people’s corpses,” Lilith casually says.

Mollymauk simply stares, dumbfounded by the group’s calm demeanor of that statement. Caduceus continues, “Yeah, it’s been something I’ve been fond of doing. There’s just something about continuing one’s life cycle, even after death, by these means. I figured it’s only natural.”

Mollymauk continues to blankly stare, wondering how and why he ended up being seemingly resurrected only to find such odd people. “Well, thank the gods you all didn’t add me to your tea collection. But I must ask, if where I came from was a grave, does that mean I died?”

“It would seem that way,” Caduceus answers. “Judging from how Lilith described the wound, I hardly think anyone could live through that. But she convinced me to help the healing process and give you another chance at living.”

“Wait… you brought me back from the dead?”

“Isn’t it cool?” Lilith says. “He doesn’t do it much, but he can bring things back to life. It takes a while, but he can do it. I wish I could do something as cool as that…”

Mollymauk takes a moment to himself, trying to assess the situation. There wasn’t much to try and comprehend other than the obvious: someone killed him, Lilith stumbled upon his grave and told Caduceus about what she found, thus him being brought back to life and having tea with the three inhabitants of this temple. “I guess all I can say is thank you, Caduceus.”

“Oh, for what?” Caduceus asks.

“For giving me another chance to live. I’m not really sure what had happened before now, but that’s something to figure out on another day.”

“Oh, well you’re welcome,” Caduceus says, smiling from ear to ear.

“So, what are you going to do now, Mr. Mollymauk?” Lilith asks. “That note says you have to find the Mighty Nein.”

Mollymauk looks back at the note, trying to understand what it says. “If what you’re saying is on the note, then I guess I should go looking for this group.”

Lilith and Revi frown with disappointment, “Aww, you’re really going to leave? I was starting to get used to having you around already.”

Caduceus chuckles as he pats the girls’ heads, “Now girls, we can’t keep Mr. Mollymauk here for much longer.” He looks at Mollymauk with seemingly wise eyes, “Something tells me he should seek out his friends. They probably miss you.”

Mollymauk thinks for a moment, wondering what to do. Finally, he looks up at the group and smiles, “Well, no one says I have to look for them right away. Besides, I wouldn’t even know who to look for or where to begin searching. If you don’t mind, Caduceus, I think I’d like to stay here for a bit.”

Lilith and Revi’s eyes light up as they look to Caduceus. “Please, Mr. Clay! He seems so nice! He can help out around the place, and besides, he still looks pretty banged up. We can’t let him go out like this!”

Noticing the girls’ excitement and Mollymauk’s valid point, Caduceus nods his head in agreement. “There’s no rush to anything you’d want to do. Just know that if you ever feel the need to search for your friends, you’re always welcome to do so. In fact,” he pauses for a moment, “maybe we can help you.”

Mollymauk’s eyes widen, “You… you’d do that for me?”

“I don’t see why not. Besides, I think you’re growing on a certain couple of girls.”

Lilith giggles, “It’s the tattoos. Do you have any more on you?”

“Hmm, maybe. I guess we can take a look.”

Lilith and Revi lead Mollymauk to another part of the den, putting together a place for him to rest once he gets settled in. Caduceus continues drinking his tea and watches over them, quietly smiling to himself.

_“I’m sure he’ll figure out what he wants to do soon,”_ Caduceus thinks to himself. _“After all, I’m sure the Mighty Nein would like to come back and check on their colorful friend.”_


End file.
